Oeo ... are these sounds part of the international auxiliary language of music, a kind of World Music Esperanto? Or is it simply a yodel without the “h”, the essence of the, long since worn-out, yodeling syllable “ho-e-ho”?

Alma possess the equally rare talent to merge music of different regions, eras and styles (including but not limited to the music they grew up with) both playfully and confidently to create a new musical universe. The soundtrack on this album takes us from Denmark to Lima, from Apulia to the Upper Austrian Traunviertel, where we find Anton Bruckner, Imogen Heap and the boys from Bilderbuch engaged in a heated discussion about the landler and its rhythm. In this archetypal folk music in three-quarter time, the accentuation is on the first and third beats. The rhythm is like the pulsation of a healthy heart muscle: boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom. As their name suggests, Alma play music of the soul – and music of the heart.

Alma have fitted out traditional folk music in some groovy modern clothes, yet without dressing it up as something it isn’t: Julia, Matteo, Marlene, Evelyn and Marie-Theres play the violin, the double bass and the accordion, they sing and yodel, imbued with cheerfulness and humor, with passion and melancholy. Alma’s music triggers emotions, it comes straight from the soul and wants to reach the listeners in the place where their own roots lie hidden. Ever since they started out in 2011, Alma have been merging genuine folk-music down- to-earthness with complex arrangements, traveling up and down music history with effortless ease. Because of the natural way in which classical and folk music, landler and polka, yodel and waltz, bourrée and musette resound side by side, because everything is genuine – the joy, the happiness, the melancholy – and every single note is placed with great respect, always leaving plenty of room for inspiration, Alma’s music is capable of pushing boundaries without breaking with musical traditions. Their debut album Nativa was released by col legno in 2013, followed by their second album Transalpin in May 2015.

AWARDS: Quarterly Critics’ Choice of the German Record Critics’ Award Association, category Folk/Folklore (4th quarter 2013) 2nd place at the Austrian World Music Awards 2015 German World Music Award RUTH 2017

I. Zoetrope — ALMA generate images, transforming music into a zoetrope in the listener’s head: The audience’s cranium becomes a movie screen. The sounds are translated into inner images that are projected onto the bone and revolve, one a er the other, along the inner surfaces, until the still image becomes motion ... Every shake of your head, every bob and nod along with the melody makes the projections rotate in your brain, with your very own soundtrack always in and between your ears. It is not a movie for your eyes but a movie for your ears.

II. Engine — ALMA connect to the body like an engine. The music ropes in the muscles for a dance move, a shaking, a swaying. The sta lines grow through your body, keeping it upright and in motion. The key signatures are wri en all over your face. The treble clefs unlock the chambers of your ticking heart. No-one manages to remain stationary, si ing still becomes an impossibility. The sound pulls the people as though they were puppets on a string, tightening their tendons, bending their limbs, making them dance or sway or swing in their seats, like an organic pendulum.

III. Time machine — ALMA are a time machine that generates nostalgia and confusion in the perception and the fabric of time, perpetually, and strictly in line with the underlying concept. The music becomes a hybrid of today and yesterday. You discover the past wrapped up in the dauntlessness of modern times. Again and again you nd yourself in the midst of your own memories or visions of the future, occasionally even some that you never knew about, that make you unsure whether you ever experienced, or will experience, their predecessor, the present to which they relate. You get to think about summer balls you never a ended, and dances you always wanted to go to. Dark pastures are conjured up in your head, and cities in the rst light of dawn. Homesickness comes to mind at the beginning of a song, and a yearning for far-o places at its end. Yet all the time you feel you discern the melancholy of the origin, as the starting point, the nal point, the vanishing point.

IV. Cosmodrome — ALMA are a spaceport from which you are sent on a journey between the spheres, to sound spaces separated by wide distances, somewhere between the native soil and a dark universe. The songs and the di erent lan- guages in which they are wri en propel you through the most diverse of cos- moses: listening, you tumble from one melody into the next, one you believed to be far, far away from the rst. Alma’s cosmodrome hurls you away from your habits, right into the heart of a music every part of which is a small world of its own, located in a di erent place. Have a good journey.

Alma - Oeo (Teaser)

Alma - Oeo (Teaser II)

1CD

World

Young

Recommendation

With their 2nd Album the 5 austrian wunderkinder - better known as Alma - are back at it again and show us once more what traditional austrian folk music has to sound like nowadays.

Firmly rooted in traditional folk music from Austria yet branching out in every possible musical direction, Alma make music that comes straight from the soul and goes directly your legs.